Classical review: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

LATVIAN conductor Andris Nelsons has the figure of a man who can exert his will over the obstinate minds of a symphony orchestra. He is big, broad and sweeping in his gestures, but with an agility that is tireless, nimble and physically compelling.

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Star rating: * * * *

It was exactly that combination of attributes that ignited last night’s sizzling performance of Sibelius’s Symphony No 2 by Nelsons and the CBSO. Right from the opening bars, it was clear where he was going with it – a ripe and wholesome glow peppered with those rugged, cut-glass chatterings of Sibelius, driven by a vivid, conversational theatricality and ultimately held together by an inevitability of purpose that shone at its brightest in the burnished intensity of the final bars.

Such gravitational completeness was just what we needed after the intriguingly frenetic world of Sofia Gubaidulina, the 81-year-old former Soviet composer, whose substantial 1981 Violin Concerto, Offertorium, with Baiba Skride as soloist, filled the first half.

Using the theme of Bach’s Musical Offering as a pointillist springboard, the language is restless, the textures hypersensitive and the role for the soloist initially fragmentary.

All was finally redeemed in the gorgeously dense closing moments, where Skride’s true artistry could shine through.